LHC, RHIC, cosmic rays and neutrinos reap a batch of honours
The science and technology of modern collider-beam machines, as well as the physics that they are beginning to access, are earning awards for the pioneering scientists and engineers involved. In particular, three of the key people in the LHC project at CERN have received recent recognition for their work. At the same time, particle physics that goes back to its roots in studying particles from the Sun and natural cosmic accelerators also figures in the latest awards.
The American Physical Society (APS) has recognized the LHC project leader, Lyn Evans, with the award of the 2008 Robert R Wilson prize. Evans receives the prize in recognition of his outstanding achievement in the physics of particle accelerators, and for his "sustained career of technical innovation and leadership in the SPS proton–antiproton collider, culminating in the construction and commissioning of the LHC". Evans played a key role in bringing the SPS at CERN to operate as a proton–antiproton collider, which led to the discovery of the W and Z bosons in 1983 and the award of the Nobel Prize in Physics to Carlo Rubbia and Simon van der Meer in 1984. He has since been a leading figure and driving force behind the project to build the LHC.
Earlier in the year, the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) Council on Superconductivity honoured Lucio Rossi, head of the Magnet and Superconductor Group in CERN's Accelerator Technology Division, with its Award for Continuing and Significant Contributions in the Field of Applied Superconductivity. The IEEE recognized Rossi's leadership of the group responsible for procuring the superconducting dipole and quadrupole magnets for the LHC; his contributions to the design of various superconducting magnet systems, including the ATLAS barrel toroid magnet; and his teaching work at the University of Milan and INFN, where he trained future leaders of the superconducting magnet community. He received the award during the International Conference on Magnetic Technology (MT-20), held in Philadelphia at the end of August.
More recently, Philippe Lebrun, head of CERN's Accelerator Technology Department, received the title of doctor honoris causa in a ceremony at Wrocław University of Technology on 2 October. The university honoured Lebrun, who leads his department's work on magnets, cryogenics and vacuum technology for the LHC project, for his contributions to the development of helium cryogenics and its application to accelerator technologies. The university rector, Taddeus Luty, chaired the ceremony and Maciej Chorowski, dean of the faculty of mechanical and power engineering at Wrocław and member of the Polish delegation to CERN's finance committee, awarded the degree.
Work on the pioneering heavy-ion collider RHIC at Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) has also received awards from the APS and IEEE. Satoshi Ozaki and Michael Harrison, who led the decade-long development and construction of RHIC, received the 2007 Particle Accelerator Science and Technology Award at the 22nd Particle Accelerator Conference in June (see "Accelerator experts meet in Albuquerque"). The Nuclear and Plasma Sciences Society of the IEEE sponsors this award, which they shared with Victor Malka of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique. Malka was honoured for his groundbreaking work on laser-plasma accelerators.
The APS has recognized further work at RHIC with the 2008 Tom W Bonner prize for outstanding experimental research in nuclear physics. Arthur Poskanzer of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory receives the award "in recognition of his pioneering role in the experimental studies of flow in relativistic heavy-ion collisions". Poskanzer co-founded the STAR collaboration at RHIC and is a co-discoverer of elliptic flow there – important evidence for quark–gluon plasma.
The APS also recognizes the returning influence of cosmic-ray studies in high-energy physics by awarding the 2008 W K H Panofsky prize in experimental particle physics to George Cassiday and Pierre Sokolsky of the University of Utah, for "the pioneering development of the atmospheric fluorescence technique as a method for exploring the highest energy cosmic rays". The method was used at the Fly's Eye and High-Resolution Fly's Eye cosmic-ray detectors at Dugway Proving Ground, and in the new Telescope Array cosmic-ray observatory in Utah. The method also features in the Pierre Auger project.
The importance of non-accelerator physics has come to the fore in recent years with the solution of the long-standing solar neutrino problem in terms of neutrino oscillations and neutrino mass. The APS recognizes this with the J J Sakurai prize for outstanding achievement in particle theory, awarded jointly to Stanislav Mikheyev of the Russian Academy of Sciences and Alexei Smirnov of the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics. They receive the prize for their "pioneering and influential work on the enhancement of neutrino oscillations in matter, which is essential to a quantitative understanding of the solar neutrino flux".